I’ve said many times the Roland TR-808 is the king of all drum machines. It has the sharpest deepest kick with the most attack, snares and hats that sound like lighting and a sequencer that makes any beat sound incredible. I love this machine so much I think I subconsciously liked songs because they had an 808 on them (all before I even knew what a Roland TR-808 was!). I love this video above where a bunch of classics with 808 drums were recreated on an Korg Electribe SX. I own everyone one of these songs on 12″.

“Recreations, again by ear, of some classic early 80s beats that were originally made on a Roland TR-808 drummachine. This became the signature sound for freestyle music and later for house. Mantronix – 808 Beats, Shannon – Let the Music Play, Freeez – IOU, Man Parrish – Hip Hop Bebop, GLOBE & Whiz Kid -. Play that Beat Mr. DJ, Nineteen – Paul Hardcastle (iTunes link), C.O.D. – In the Bottle, Marvin Gaye – Sexual Healing” – Harlem Nights Music

Today I have am asking you guys for a bit of help. Normally a Google search is all I need to find out anything I need to know but I’m a little stumped on this one. I joined Facebook before they had “Fan Pages”. So like with MySpace when people who liked my music wanted to friend me I gladly obliged. I did set up a Facebook Group but I could not simultaneously update my profile and the Group so it was useless really. Today I have a lot of Facebook friends.

Here is the problem I am having: I get a lot of emails “to the members of” pertaining to an upcoming techno event. I never joined to be a member of any of these groups/events. Some of the emails are from actual friends (like Reade Truth). I don’t want to unfriend him. I only want to stop receiving those types of event notifications from him. Some of the emails are from people I friended who I didn’t know (thinking they were fans). I could unfriend them but if they are genuinely interested in following my updates I don’t want to be rude. Lastly, I get “to the members of” event notifications from people who are not my friends at all.

I’ve gone into My Account -> Notifications and unclicked everything I can imagine would be causing the issue. I set up some Gmail rules so Facebook notifications skip my inbox and go into a Facbook folder but I still have to weed through 15+ “to the members of” emails per day. So what’s really going on here? Any help would be appreciated!

I’d like an installation like this permanently in my living room. Created in Berlin by Joerg Piringer he calls this work [untitled] and describes it as “an interactive sound poetry installation”. Be sure to check out Joerge’s other interesting installations too. I like the one’s that spit out random Twitter feeds.

“the visitors speak, shout and cry into a microphone to evoke a dynamic world of letters and vocal sounds. image and sound are created immediately by speaking and vocalizing into a microphone and modifying the voice through signal processing while the software is analyzing the sound to create animated abstract visual text-compositions.” – jörg piringer

Here’s a great video from the Sasquatch Music Festival 2009 (watch until the end for the good stuff). James over at Synthtopia titled this video, “If You’re Doing A Live Show, Make Sure You Invite This Guy.”. I agree 100%. This reminds me of the movie Defending Your Life. The basic moral of the movie is that you only live once so stop worrying what other people think of you. I’m such a tightly wound person I think of think of this stuff a lot. I’m always trying to remember that most people are just concerned with their own lives, no one really cares what the hell you are doing so enjoy your time without shame.

“Yuppie Daniel Miller is killed in a car accident and goes to Judgment City, a waiting room for the afterlife. During the day, he must prove in a courtroom-style process that he successfully overcame his fears (a hard task, given the pitiful life we are shown)” – Defending Your Life, IMDB.com

SoundCloud has become the best place for musicians to store and share music online. The Berliners have continutally upgraded their site’s services listening to it’s customers. Beyond the new features the site is managing to scale well and it looks very pretty. Here are some of the new tools in the latest release “Taylor”.

SoundCloud already had the best embeddable audio player with a great waveform display and comments along it’s timeline. Now there are two new player widgets called “Artwork” and “Mini player”. Here they are:

Artwork Player (Roll/click your mouse over for effect):

Mini Player (Click Play to expose mini waveform):

Sharing is much better now too as they follow Flickr a bit here allowing users to grab a Secret Link to send out. Stats is greatly improved (where there even Stats before?). Just take a look at these Stats from the past seven days:

Here we go with a big one: an official SoundCloud iPhone app! Take a look Ma no flash (Video above).

Finally there is a new pricing structure that could make more sense for the unemployed and skeptical. For more info: click here

We all know Ikea furniture can be hacked into useful recording studio stands, etc.. The Ikea Jerker desk is one example. I’ve seen countless bedroom studios (especially in Europe) using the Jerker. Here’s a link to check out a “how to hack a Jerker for the studio”: How to Build A Studio Desk For Music Production.

If you need to turn a corner of a modern living room into a mini studio you may want to check out the Ikea Benno television stand. It features three tiers long enough for 36 keys, drum machines, jars of patch cords and has a cable hiding mechanism in the back. Benno is $69.99.

Dubspot is school in New York City that trains DJ’s and electronic musicians. I’ve been to the facility for a few Ableton meetings and it was always interesting. Mike Hatsis gives us a run through on using Ableton reverbs and such in a Minimal track. I like how he says, “I like to think of it as the sound’s shadow.”.

“Dubspot Instructor, Michael Hatsis, shows how to add Space and Dimension to Minimal Techno style drums. Topics covered include using Drum Rack’s Send and Return tracks, as well as Creating and using a Plate and a Room style reverb in Ableton Live.” – dubspot.com

A full room of oscillators and vintage tape machines on your Mac for less than $20. My favorite example of electronic music from the early days is the soundtrack to the movie Forbidden Planet (Amazon link).

“Between the 1950s and the mid 1960s, long before Robert Moog and Wendy Carlos injected electronics into pop-music (with a few exceptions like the Barrons and Raymond Scott), electroacoustic music was pioneered by european radio laboratories and US universities. Composing with tapes and electronics was a serious painstaking and expensive affair, prerogative of a restricted elite of contemporary music composers and adventurous sound engineers…. Berna is a software simulation of a late 1950s electroacoustic music studio. Oscillators, filters, modulators, tape recorders, mixers, are all packed in a easy-to-use interface with historical accuracy.” – gleetchplug.com

I really wanted a Tenori-on when they came out. I went to the launch party in Berlin (see post: here). I do feel the price is justified however it still keeps the Japanese music box out of most peoples hands. Yamaha seems to understand that and is releasing a new more affordable Tenori called the Tenori-O. It’s white plastic (instead of the original’s magnesium casing), has Orange LEDs instead of white and those LED’s are only single sided. Lastly, there is no battery option on the “O”. Music programmability and features do remain the same for the “O” when compared to it’s older brother. The real question will be how low can get they get the price. If anyone knows what the retail will be let me know.

“Since 2007 Tenori-On has also picked up numerous prestigious design awards thanks to it’s addictive and brilliant interface and striking design. Recently it won a coveted place in New York’s Museum of Modern Art… Yamaha’s Peter Peck explains the thinking “We know everyone loves the concept and fresh approach of Tenori-On, however, as you’d expect we have received thousands of requests for a more affordable version. We therefore looked at many ways of reducing the price without compromising the all-important product concept or creative operating system. To coincide with the unveiling of the new model Yamaha have also confirmed a free forthcoming firmware update for current Tenori-On customers.” – Yamaha